The Honest Failure

I’m squeezing a stress ball shaped like a smiling brain while Greg-a man who clearly hasn’t had a bad day since 1995-explains that my cortisol levels are a choice. We are 45 minutes into a mandatory ‘Mindfulness and Resilience’ workshop, and the irony is so thick I can taste it. Or maybe that’s just the lingering aftertaste of the moldy sourdough I bit into earlier.

There are 15 of us in here. We are the core response team for hazardous materials, the people who get the calls when a tank car flips or a laboratory decides to become a bonfire. My name is Finley R.J., and I’ve spent the better part of a decade neutralising things that want to melt your skin off. I understand containment. I understand risk mitigation. But sitting here, listening to Greg talk about ‘internal equilibrium’ while my department is currently understaffed by 25 percent and our equipment is 15 years past its expiration date, feels like a different kind of toxic exposure.

The Cost of Incompetence

Management didn’t fix the ventilation in the East Wing. They didn’t replace the leaky seals on the Grade-B containers that caused the scare 5 weeks ago. Instead, they spent $4575 to bring in Greg. It’s a classic move. When the system is broken, don’t fix the system-fix the people until they stop complaining about the system. They want us to be ‘resilient’ so we can survive their incompetence without the inconvenience of a nervous breakdown.

Turnover Disparity

When you see a gap like that, it isn’t because the employees are collectively bad at breathing exercises. It’s because the environment is corrosive. But if HR admits the environment is the problem, they have to change how they lead. If they blame our ‘lack of resilience,’ they just have to book another 95-minute Zoom call. It’s the ultimate form of corporate gaslighting: reframing a systemic failure as a personal deficiency.

The Psychological Shoring

I remember a job back in 2005 involving a clandestine lab that had essentially melted into the floorboards of a suburban basement. The structural integrity of the house was gone. You couldn’t just walk in there; you had to reinforce the joists before you could even think about removing the chemicals. Management at that site tried to tell us to just ‘be careful’ and ‘move fast.’ They didn’t want to pay for the shoring. They wanted us to absorb the structural failure with our own physical safety. This workshop is the psychological version of that.

I tried to bring this up during the Q&A portion. I asked Greg how ‘box breathing’ was meant to help a technician who is working 65-hour weeks because we can’t retain staff. Greg smiled-that kind of practiced, vapid smile that suggests he’s never actually had to sweat through a Level A hazmat suit-and said, ‘Finley, we can’t control the external world, only our reaction to it.’

Controlling the External World

That is a lie. Management controls the ‘external world’ of the office. They control the schedules, the budgets, and the safety protocols. They are choosing to create a high-pressure, low-resource environment and then acting surprised when people start to crack. It’s like an operator of a complex system blaming the players for losing when the machine itself is rigged to fail.

In any fair environment, whether it’s a hazardous waste site or a digital platform, the responsibility for safety starts with the architecture. For instance, when you look at how ufadaddy approaches the concept of responsible environments, the focus is on the integrity of the system and the fairness of the framework, not just telling the individual to ‘try harder’ or ‘be more resilient’ against an imbalanced set of rules.

Management is the leak, and training is just a bucket.

I’ve seen this pattern 15 times in the last 5 years across different agencies. Training becomes a substitute for leadership. They’ll give you a ‘time management’ seminar instead of reducing an impossible workload. They’ll give you a ‘diversity and inclusion’ video instead of firing the manager who makes bigoted jokes at the water cooler. It’s a way to check a box. It’s a way to say, ‘We did something,’ without actually doing the hard work of fixing the root cause.

Patching the Physical vs. Managing the Mental

In hazmat disposal, if I find a 55-gallon drum leaking nitric acid, I don’t give the acid a lecture on self-control. I don’t ask the drum to meditate on its leakage. I patch the hole, or I overpack the drum into a larger, more secure container. I address the physical reality of the failure. But in the corporate world, we’ve decided that the ‘drums’-the people-are the only thing that needs to be managed. If the acid is leaking out, it’s because the person didn’t have enough ‘grit.’

I didn’t fall. I just stood there and watched him look at me, realizing that no amount of ‘trust-building’ could overwrite the fact that he was dangerous to work for. He wanted the shortcut. He wanted the feeling of a cohesive team without the effort of being a reliable leader.

The True Definition of Resilience

This mindfulness seminar is the same shortcut. It’s designed to make us more ‘durable’ so we can handle more abuse. It’s the PPE of the mind, except instead of a heavy-duty respirator, they’re giving us a paper mask and telling us the fumes aren’t that bad if we just think positive thoughts. It’s an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has ever had to actually manage a real crisis.

If companies actually cared about resilience, they would look at the 5 main causes of burnout: lack of control, unfair treatment, unmanageable workload, lack of role clarity, and poor communication. None of those things are solved by a PowerPoint slide about ‘finding your zen.’ They are solved by managers who listen, by directors who allocate resources effectively, and by an organizational culture that values reality over optics.

Maybe the real resilience isn’t learning how to endure a dumpster fire. Maybe the real resilience is having the courage to point at the fire and ask why the person holding the matches is the one telling everyone else to keep calm. We don’t need more training on how to handle the stress of a failing department; we need a department that doesn’t fail its people.